Political Junkie: How's That Election Count Going?

Sorry we've been gone from the scene for so long -- yes, we've been swamped at work, but honestly, we've been so dispirited with this particular election cycle lately, we figured we were going to boycott posting until it was OVER. Over over over.

So -- man, how irritating is this? It's going to be over! Thanks to the city's questionable ballot-reading machines, it's going to take weeks to finish the count. So we're lifting our self-imposed embargo early and reporting in on the status of the results.

--Overall stats: 30 precincts left to report in (about 5% to go, at least on the initiatives -- see note below re mayor's race status), and turnout so far is an anemic 16%.

--Mayoral race. Newsom: down from 75% in the absentees to 68%. Quintin Mecke is now in second with 8%. Chicken John at 2.25%, h. brown at .84% (552 votes). These are first-choice picks only, we think, and a sizable shift from the initial absentee count, where Hoogasian was in second and Pang in third. (Hoogasian is now in third, and Pang at fourth.)

Also, don't forget that the mayor's race is going to take longer to count because they've gotta count every single ballot that didn't vote for three candidates by hand, and not that many people ranked three separate choices, so it's slow going and these numbers are definitely likely to change. It looks like they're only about halfway through the mayoral ballots.

Along with the last 5% of the precincts, there's also still 25,000 absentees and 5000 provisionals to count. They're projecting to finish up by next week.